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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - 1 Corinthians 10:4 - 10:4
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Drink - spiritual drink
Spiritual, like the meat, in being supernaturally given. The aorist tense denotes something past, yet without limiting it to a particular occasion. They drank at Rephidim (Exo 17:6), but they continued to drink spiritual drink, for -
They drank (ἔπινον)
The imperfect tense denoting continued action - throughout their journey.
That spiritual rock
For that read a. Paul appears to recall a rabbinic tradition that there was a well formed out of the spring in Horeb, which gathered itself up into a rock like a swarm of bees, and followed the people for forty years; sometimes rolling itself, sometimes carried by Miriam, and always addressed by the elders, when they encamped, with the words, “Spring up, O well!” Num 21:17. Stanley says: “In accordance with this notion, the Rock of Moses, as pointed out by the local tradition of Mt. Sinai, is not a cleft in the mountain, but a detached fragment of rock about fifteen feet high, with twelve or more fissures in its surface, from which the water is said to have gushed out for the twelve tribes. This local tradition is as old as the Koran, which mentions this very stone.”
Was Christ
Showing that he does not believe the legend, but only uses it allegorically. The important point is that Christ the Word was with His people under the old covenant. “In each case we recognize the mystery of a 'real presence”' (Ellicott). “God was in Christ” here, as from the beginning. The mosaic and the christian economies are only different sides of one dispensation, which is a gospel dispensation throughout. The Jewish sacraments are not mere types of ours. They are identical.